Echoes of Ruin

Obscura didn’t look ready.

The gates opened at dawn, iron creaking like the bones of something ancient that hadn’t finished healing. New sigils pulsed low and blue along the archways, flickering like a heartbeat trying to remember its rhythm. They’d etched the symbols deep into the stone this time, not the elegant carvings we’d had last semester, but brutal, blocky wards meant to repel bloodsteel and chainfire. Magic without manners. Protective, but ugly.

I arrived before the crowds. That wasn’t unusual for me. Most wolves liked to make a show of their return, rolling in with their packs and dragging their scent all over the courtyards like it meant something. But I wasn’t here for spectacle. I was here to see what had changed. And more importantly, what hadn’t.

The courtyard was half-scrubbed. You could still see the scorch marks if you looked close enough. Some jackass had tried to cover it with illusion work, but it didn’t take. The ash bled through, same as the memories. Everywhere you looked were the subtle reminders of last semester’s battle. Of how Nora, Caelum, Lucien, and Elias bled for each other, for their bond and their freedom.

They’d pressure-washed the stones. Painted the walls. But the campus still smelled like fear soaked in blood.

Hawthorne House loomed in the east wing like it always had, strong and shadowed, ivy climbing its face like veins. Our House had the thickest doors, the longest hallways, and the worst lighting. Someone once said it was built to keep the wolves in line. But we all knew better. Hawthorne didn’t cage wolves. It trained them. Or tried to.

The new guard patrols hadn’t seen me yet. I moved quietly through the courtyard, ears catching the subtle buzz of layered wards humming just beneath the snow-packed stone. Someone had reinforced the boundaries over break. The scent of foxglove and salt, magical components for shifter suppression, clung faintly to the air. I didn’t love that.

I dropped my bag outside the dorm wing and scanned the rooftops, new sentry stations. Better vantage points. One of the gargoyle statues had been replaced with a crystal-eyed watcher rune. The kind that burned through glamours and illusions. Effective. Paranoid.

Smart.

Inside, the air was warmer, but it didn’t feel welcoming. They’d scrubbed down the walls, repainted the stairwells, and repaired the windows. But I could still smell old blood at the base of the stairs near the practice wing. Someone had died here. Maybe more than one someone. My wolf knew it. His hackles lifted under my skin even though I kept my steps measured.

Second-born alpha or not, I was still Runebound. And Runebound wolves didn’t flinch. We studied. We fought. We held the damn line.

I paused outside my dorm room. My nameplate was still on the door, etched in old oak. The lock clicked open without resistance. That was new. Last semester, it always stuck. Either someone had oiled it, or someone had been inside.

I stepped in.

And didn’t breathe for a second. Not because something was wrong.

Because something was watching.

The silence inside my room wasn’t threatening. It was expectant. The kind of stillness that warned you something important was about to start. I didn’t unpack. Didn’t sit. Just stood there long enough for my wolf to settle beneath my skin, then turned and walked right back out the door.

The quad looked different in daylight. Not just cleaned, rewritten. The wards shimmered across the main pathway in faint pulses, like veins under skin. The cobblestone gleamed wet and dark from melted snow, runoffs lined in clean grooves that probably hadn’t been there last semester. More control. More visibility.

We needed it.

I stepped down the worn stairs of Hawthorne’s east wing, boots crunching quietly against the frost-laced edge of the path, cloak brushing my calves. The green lining marked me immediately, silver thorns woven through the hem catching faint light from the sigil lanterns overhead. My leather belt hung low at my hips, combat straps snug around my thigh, one sheath already filled. I didn’t come back to Obscura expecting peace.

The main courtyard ahead flickered ember-gold. I knew that hue before I saw her.

Nora Carver stood with her back to the fountain, curls haloed in morning light, fire dancing in the folds of her coat lining. Her uniform matched the rest of us; high-collared black coat, crisp white shirt, charcoal slacks tucked into boots charmed against snow, but the moment she stepped on Aurelian ground, her cloak had changed. Ember red. Scorched black trim. Gold stitching that shimmered like flame. Her sigil, once fractured and lost to time, glowed faintly behind her left shoulder. Only those who truly saw her would see it at all.

Three figures stood beside her, none of them dressed in the cloaks they were born into.

Caelum was unmistakable, even without the Hawthorne silver on his arm. His coat bore faint traces of green, a shadow of what it once was, but now the trim burned dark bronze with red piping. His arm wraps were tighter, cleaner, and his stance said he’d spent the break training like war was coming tomorrow. The forest still clung to his scent: pine, frost, and wet earth. Wolf through and through.

Lucien stood opposite him like sin carved from silk, his tailored uniform reworked with Nerezza cuts; longer lines, shadow-black sleeves, and subtle crimson trim, but the color had shifted. The bat-winged rose pin was gone. In its place, he wore nothing at all on his heart. No house. No clan. Just defiance wrapped in tailored wool.

Elias leaned against the low railing nearby, his fingers twitching with residual magic. Violet Everley runes were gone from his sleeves, replaced with understated copper etchings that pulsed under the surface of his coat. He’d rethreaded his sleeves by hand, typical, and the faint scent of singed paper clung to him like a ward still cooling down.

They looked like a unit. Like something built in fire and bound by shared loss.

“Glad to see the tailor survived the winter,” I said as I stepped closer.

Caelum smirked, pushing off the wall. “Some of us don’t show up looking like a recruiting poster.”

Nora’s eyes warmed slightly, but her jaw stayed tense. “You made it in early.”

“Had to,” I said. “Wanted to walk the grounds before they got too crowded.”

Elias nodded once. “There’s movement near the west wall—subtle sigil displacement. Professor Draemir’s already marking the ground. Think we’ve got another breach point starting.”

“Same patterns as the Interregnum?” I asked.

“No symbols yet,” Lucien said, his voice low and razor-sharp. “But it smells like the kind of rot they leave behind.”

Caelum scanned the rooftops. “Three new guards posted above the Everley annex. One of them’s glamoured, but I caught the edge of a false scent. Sour. Not faculty.”

“Interregnum’s changing tactics,” Elias muttered.

“Getting smarter,” Nora added, her voice harder now. “Quieter.”

“And closer,” Lucien said. “They’re not trying to break the school anymore. They’re trying to poison it from the inside.”

I looked at each of them, at the sharp edges and sleepless eyes, the quiet tension that hadn’t been there last semester. We weren’t just students anymore. Not really. Not after everything. The uniforms might’ve stayed the same, but nothing else had.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

Nora’s gaze didn’t waver. “We hold. We watch. And if they come again…”

Caelum cracked his knuckles.

Lucien smiled without warmth.

Elias’s fingers twitched once more.

“…we make damn sure they regret it.”

The courtyard buzzed low, like a storm gathering beneath polished stone and false calm. The others felt it too. Nora’s shoulders stiffened. Caelum stopped mid-sentence. Lucien turned his head like scent alone had caught his attention.

That’s when I heard the footsteps.

Boots. Heavy. Measured. Too slow to be eager, too confident to be cautious. I caught the scent first, ironwood smoke and pine tar, undercut by something darker. Earth after rain. Blood that hadn’t dried yet.

I turned before the others did.

He stepped through the main arch like he owned the path under his feet. Ronan Draxmere. Bloodpine heir. Alpha-bred in the most brutal fucking forest left on the continent.

And he was wearing our colors.

The base uniform clung to him like it had been tailored directly onto his frame. Black high-collared coat, white shirt open just enough to flash his collarbones, storm-gray combat slacks, heavy black boots worn in at the soles. His cloak swept behind him as he walked, forest green with silver thorn embroidery curling along the lining—but it looked wrong on him. Too civilized. Too neat. His belt carried twin sheaths and a folded cord, dueling honors from another battlefield.

The Runebound wolves to my left stiffened like instinct alone told them what was coming. The crowd parted slowly and uncertainly, the air thick with murmurs.

“Is that—”

“No fucking way.”

“A Bloodpine?”

Lucien made a low sound in his throat. “And here I thought this semester might be boring.”

Ronan didn’t look at the crowd. He looked at me.

Like he’d known exactly where I’d be.

Like the others were noise, and I was the reason he stepped through the gates.

Everything in me tightened. My wolf surged up so fast I had to lock my jaw to keep my hands from curling into fists. Bloodpine wolves didn’t belong here. They didn’t study. They didn’t debate. They hunted. They ruled by claw and fire and exile.

And now their heir was standing in the center of my House’s courtyard like he had every right to breathe our air.

Our eyes locked.

He didn’t blink.

Neither did I.

Runebound and Bloodpine had been at odds for generations. We led with strategy, with history, with sacrifice. They led with brutality. Ronan was the son of that brutality, and from the look in his eyes, he didn’t regret it for a second.

But something about that stare. It didn’t burn. It pulled. Low in my chest. Sharp and wrong and undeniable.

He stopped three paces from me. Just outside of striking range. Or kissing distance. Gods, that thought was fucking cursed.

“Kellan Reed,” he said, voice like gravel warmed in a fire pit.

“You must be Ronan Draxmere,” I said. “I expected someone taller.”

His smirk was slow. Dangerous. “And I expected someone smarter.”

Behind me, I heard Caelum mutter, “Here we go.”

Yeah.

Here we fucking go.

I didn’t move.

Neither did he.

The space between us wasn’t safe. It was magnetic. Primal. My wolf pressed hard under my skin, unsure if it wanted to bare its throat or sink its teeth in first.

Before either of us could test it, Headmaster Arx’s voice cracked through the air behind us like a ward snapping. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I trust introductions can wait until you’re not surrounded by impressionable onlookers?”

Ronan broke eye contact first, turning with a casual nod. But I caught it, the flicker of heat behind his eyes. He felt it too. Whatever the hell it was.

Two days later, I found myself standing across from him again, this time inside the training annex.

No crowd. No cloak of politics or uniforms or diplomacy.

Just sweat, blood, and Professor Halden Marric watching us like a man who’d seen too many wars and didn’t mind starting another.

“Reed. Draxmere. You’re up.”

“Together?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Marric raised a brow. “You’re both top-tier combatants. Unless either of you pisses yourself at the idea?”

Ronan cracked his knuckles. “I’m game.”

Of course, he was.

We circled, blades in hand. Not steel, practice weapons charmed to bruise and break without slicing. But it didn’t matter. The violence was real. So was the heat between us.

He struck first. Fast. Brutal. I countered, pivoted, went low, and swept his leg. He recovered too quickly. We collided, teeth bared, bodies slamming into the mat hard enough to knock breath from my lungs.

He rolled on top of me.

I threw him off.

We were panting, fists bruised, one of us bleeding. I didn’t know who. Didn’t care.

When it ended, we were tangled. My hand on his throat. His knee between my legs. Our foreheads touching.

Too close.

Too much.

Marric’s voice broke the spell. “Again tomorrow.”

Fuck.